I Love Summer!

Summer is the time for grilling! The only thing I am good at grilling are potatoes in tinfoil and s'mores. However, I am married to a grilling God! The steaks Brian made tonight were phenomenal!! They were juicy, seasoned and cooked perfectly! In fact, I told him I would like to buy a cow so we would be able to have amazing steaks like that any night we wanted!! How crazy is that?!

Doesn't this look amazing?!

Along with the steaks I made a little sauteed mixture of onion, mushroom and green beans. I seasoned them with garlic, salt and pepper. The dish was really great, but I felt it was missing something. I think next time I will try adding some balsamic and some cheese. That sounds delish!

Two pictures of the side dish!

We also had strawberries to round things out. Adelle grabbed a bunch and took off the stems. She picked them off one leaf at a time, gave them to me and said, "ishy, Mommy!"

One of the perfect summer meals!

Peach-Whiskey BBQ Chicken -Pioneer Woman

Thank you Kelly for introducing me to The Pioneer Woman!!

I tried making her Peach-Whiskey BBQ Chicken recipe last night and it was amazing!! The meat was super tender and fell off the bone, and the sauce was a great mixture of sweet and tangy. I can't wait for leftovers!!

I tried to take pictures but couldn't find my camera. I ended up using my phone and, well, they aren't the best.

I started by getting everything together. Forget to take pictures until AFTER I had started so I don't have everything pictured!



Then I heated oil and butter in a large pot (I used my dutch oven). I browned both sides of 13 chicken thighs (bone-in and skin-on) then set them on a plate while I made the rest of the recipe in the same pot.


Once the chicken was browned, I took out half of the grease and added a yellow onion that I had chopped. I think next time I will take out MORE grease because, for some reason, I had a lot on top of my finished meal. Next, I added the whiskey. I am not a fan of whiskey so this part was difficult for me. I don't like the smell of it! I let that reduce a bit.


After stirring the whiskey and onion mixture, I added the BBQ sauce, peach preserves, water and Worcestershire sauce then stirred.


I added the chicken back into the pot. I even poured the juice that was on the plate into the pot as well. I put it in the oven for about 2 hours at 300 degrees. I took the pot out of the oven and it smelled great! I put a couple of thighs onto a plate, along with some mashed potatoes and a piece of zucchini bread. I would have liked the sauce to be a little thinker, so I'll keep that in mind next time. It was amazing though! I highly recommend this recipe!!




YUMMY!

Idea

I've decided to write an additional blog. About cooking.

It's going to feature food; food that I cook or bake. Don't get me wrong, I am not a chef or baker by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I can follow a recipe and the dish usually turns out. Usually. Most of the time though, I don't use a recipe. I just throw things I like together into a pan, add some butter and mix it up! I used to cook like that a lot during college and I had some of the best meals because of it!

Well, today during Writing, I had my students cut out pictures from old magazines.Some of the magazines had amazing pictures of food on the cover and inside the actual magazine. I mean, they looked so good I wanted to eat them immediately!! However, because those pictures, and subsequent recipes, looked so good, I got inspired.

I have decided to take pictures of the things I/we cook for dinner and share them with you. Share how they tasted, how they looked and how it went cooking them!!

I am excited to start!!